


The Rose City Job

by zozo



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018), Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon? 😎 I don't know her, Crossover, Gen, No Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zozo/pseuds/zozo
Summary: Eve and Villanelle travel to Portland for a case and run into the Leverage crew.





	The Rose City Job

It always starts with a murder.

Villanelle points to the relevant line in the briefing doc. “Portland, Ora-gone.”

“Oregon,” Eve corrects her pronunciation absentmindedly.

“Whatever,” says Villanelle, unfazed. “I have never been to America. This will be exciting.”

Eve is still skimming the front page of the briefing. Something towards the bottom catches her eye. “Whoa. We have an Interpol contact for this case?”

Villanelle flips ahead a few pages in the packet. “This one, James Sterling.” She taps his photo: good-looking white man, about 50, with a neatly trimmed beard and an insufferably smug smile. “Apparently there are ‘sensitive Interpol operations’ happening in Portland. They want to make sure this murder is one of ours, not one of theirs.”

Eve grunts. “So it’s not a jurisdiction thing.”

“Quite the opposite,” says Carolyn, walking up to them. “I get the impression James is rather eager to make this _our_ problem. Lord knows that poor boy has enough on his plate.”

“You know him?” Eve asks.

“He used to recover stolen art for a living.” Villanelle coughs loudly; it sounds like _boy scout_. Carolyn continues, unperturbed. “I helped him extract a Vermeer from Chelyabinsk in the late 90’s. He’s since moved onto Interpol. We keep in touch.”

Villanelle looks up at Carolyn. “You have the most _interesting_ Christmas card list.”

Carolyn smiles thinly at her. “You have no idea.”

#### Portland • Mnemosyne Industries Headquarters

“Mr. Dillon, I’m Eve Polastri of MI6. This is my associate, Oksana Astankova.”

“A pleasure to meet you both, though these are grim circumstances indeed. And on that topic: this is our head of internal security, Nicholas Courtney.”

Courtney is a compact man, almost stocky, standing between Eve and Villanelle in height. He nods at them politely when his name is mentioned. His unshaven face and messy ponytail say “chill intellectual,” but the way he holds his body, keeps his eyes constantly scanning the room from behind wire-framed glasses—all of that says “ex–Special Forces.”

Next to Eve, Villanelle goes very, very still.

* * *

As they walk to the elevator, Villanelle grabs Eve’s wrist, but doesn’t stop walking. Eve looks at her, bewildered, trying to keep up.

“That man is not Nicholas Whatever,” says Villanelle quietly. “His name is Spencer.” Her eyes flick back towards the office. “He is… was… kind of a legend. But I thought—” She cuts herself off as a Mnemosyne employee walks past. “I did not think he was taking jobs like _this_.”

Eve furrows her brow. “So is he a suspect?”

Villanelle looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes her head. Her hand is still firmly clasped around Eve’s wrist. “If he did it, he wouldn’t stick around. But if he didn’t, then he’s here for something else, and we should try to stay out of his way.”

* * *

Eve doesn’t like logging into the MI6 central database remotely. It’s an obnoxiously fiddly process involving a USB dongle, three separate passwords (including one that rotates daily) plus an app on her phone, and the eventual connection is routed through so many layers of security that it’s maddeningly slow. But her curiosity outweighs the inconvenience, so she starts setting everything up on the small desk in the hotel room.

Twenty minutes later, her curiosity has escalated from a whisper to a roar. Eliot Spencer has a file, but it’s so heavily redacted as to be nearly unreadable, and the parts that aren’t blacked out seem to contradict each other. Eve has seen a lot of redacted documents over the years; something about this one rubs her the wrong way.

She calls Kenny. “I need you to do some digging.”

* * *

Alec Hardison is talking up his latest beer, “Romulan Ale,” to a pair of customers sitting at the bar when his phone buzzes a rapid S-O-S pattern in his pocket.

“Excuse me, y’all,” he says to the couple, already halfway through the swinging door to the kitchen.

By the time he gets upstairs to his terminal, his system has gone full Red Alert. Ongoing intrusion by a state-level actor. Based on the IP addresses, it’s probably MI6. They’ve busted through three of his decoy subnets, and—Alec has to be honest with himself—if they’ve managed that this quickly, the rest of his defenses are going to be like cheap plywood in a hurricane.

He double-checks that he’s recording telemetry for later—they’re using tricks he didn’t know _anybody_ had yet, and he’s gonna study them once this is over—then bolts back to the stairs, touching only two or three steps per flight on his way to the basement.

Hardison’s server room has one totally unhackable, emergency use only, Hail Mary defense measure of absolute last resort: a massive manual mad-scientist switch on the wall that will physically sever the building from the outside internet. It’s going to be a clean slice, but it’ll still cost a small fortune to repair, and Hardison has every intention of invoicing these James Bond assholes personally.

He takes a deep breath, puts both hands on the switch, and pulls it down.

* * *

Kenny calls back a few minutes later. “What did you find?” says Eve.

“Like you thought,” Kenny says, “our internal file on Spencer was altered. I traced the hack back to the network that made the alteration, and I hit some _crazy_ security. Like, as good as ours. Bit better in a couple of ways, even.”

“Well? Did you crack it?”

“Almost. I was nearly there, and then—I think they took themselves offline. Like, completely shut down the system on their end rather than let me in.”

“Fuck,” says Eve.

“Before that, though,” Kenny continues, “I managed to get a rough location. They’re connected directly to the internet backbone, somewhere there in Portland.”

“Okay,” Eve says. “Can you cross-reference buildings in Portland that have a direct internet connection with property records, excluding any government facilities and, like, IT companies, and see what stands out?”

She hears Kenny typing. “Huh,” he says after a minute. “There’s a brewery—no, a brew pub…” More typing. Kenny mutters to himself, “Why would a bloody pub need—” and then, “a-ha! Why _would_ a pub need a backbone internet connection? Or this many megawatts a year of power, pursuant to a _fake_ decision of the Oregon Public Utility Commission?”

“It’s a front,” Eve says, and locks eyes with Villanelle.

“It’s a front,” Kenny says. “I’ll text you the address. Be careful.”

* * *

“Hey, Hardison, is there something wrong with the WiFi?”

Hardison swivels in his chair as Eliot comes into the office, holding his phone up as though to collect internet from the air more effectively. “Uh, yeah. It was making us vulnerable to getting _hacked by British intelligence_ , so it had to go.”

“British intelligence?” asks Parker, rappelling down from the ceiling. “Like James Bond?”

“No!” says Eliot, at the same time Hardison says, “Yes, exactly like James Bond.” Eliot scowls.

“So, brainstorming time. What have we done lately to draw the attention of MI-freakin'-6?”

Parker wrinkles her nose. “We haven’t been to England in… ages.”

“Right? We’ve been up to our necks in this Mnemosyne job for months,” Hardison says. “But why would MI6 care about Mnemosyne?”

Eliot nudges Hardison and points to the security feed from the brew pub. Two well-dressed women have just walked in: one young and blonde, one middle-aged and Asian.

“Let’s ask ’em,” says Eliot.

“Them… those… that’s MI6?”

“Yeah,” Eliot says. “They were at Mnemosyne asking Dillon about Leary’s murder. Sounded like they were investigating a bunch more murders in Europe, and thought this one might be connected.”

Parker frowns. “But Dillon killed Leary.”

“I don’t think they know that,” says Hardison, eyes still on the monitors. “And I don’t think they’re here for a Romulan Ale.”

Parker gets out of her climbing harness. “I’ll go invite them up.”

* * *

It’s a nice place, Eve thinks as they walk in, if a little hipster-y. She was expecting a dive, like the kebab place she and Niko used to go to before it got shut down for being a money laundering operation, but the floors are clean and the food smells amazing.

If this place turns out _not_ to be run by a murderous cabal of technologists, maybe she can talk Villanelle into staying for lunch.

A slim white woman with a tight blonde ponytail steps through the swinging doors of the kitchen and starts walking straight towards them. She looks older than Villanelle, younger than Eve, and she moves like a dancer—or a predatory jungle cat. Villanelle moves to stand slightly in front of Eve.

“Hi,” the woman says. Her tone is cheerful, chirpy even, but her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “My name’s Parker. We need to talk.”

* * *

It’s… not what Eve was expecting. It seems to be simultaneously an office, a studio apartment, and the control center of a vast array of technology.

Quite a few of the monitors in the room are displaying things like `Network Error` or `Connection Lost!`, and Eve feels quietly proud of Kenny.

As they come further into the… apartment?… Eve sees there are two people waiting for them. One is a tall, broad-shouldered black man about Parker’s age, and the other—is Nicholas Courtney, Mnemosyne head of security, aka Eliot Spencer, occupation currently unknown.

Eve stops dead, wishing like hell she had a gun. “Okay,” she says, trying to summon her most Carolyn Martens voice, “what the hell is going on here?” She expects to feel Villanelle tense behind her, ready to kick the shit out of these people, but instead Villanelle is walking slowly up to Spencer, hand held out.

“Eliot Spencer,” she says, and Eve has never heard this kind of reverence in her voice before. “It is such an honour to meet you. I have heard so many amazing stories.” Spencer shakes her hand, looking deeply uncomfortable.

“Okayyyy,” says the other man, whose muscular arms are folded tightly across his chest. “And I’m Hardison. Who are you people?”

Eve narrows her eyes, then hands him her credentials. “Eve Polastri,” she says in a clipped voice. “MI6. This is my associate, Oksana Astankova.”

Eliot reacts to the name by taking two large steps back from Villanelle, who actually blushes. “You have heard of me?” she says.

“Yeah,” he responds carefully, eyes flicking quickly to Eve before locking back onto Villanelle. “Sounds like you’re out of the game too.” It’s part statement, part question. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

Villanelle looks over her shoulder and beams at Eve, who’s watching this exchange feeling completely lost. “I know,” she says, turning back to Spencer. “I didn’t see it coming either. But here I am, with Eve, and we keep running into you. Why?”

The woman called Parker clears her throat. “Basically? Mnemosyne is evil. They steal people’s personal data, they don’t safeguard it, and they sell it off to the highest bidder. So we’re taking them down,” she finishes with a shrug, as though she’d just admitted to taking a bag of recycling down to the depot instead of orchestrating the collapse of a multi-billion-dollar company.

Hardison hands Eve’s credentials back, his demeanor already friendlier. “You two are here about Andrew Leary.”

“Yes,” says Villanelle plainly. “Do you know who killed him?”

“Henry Dillon,” says Parker. “He’s the one behind all Mnemosyne’s dirty deeds, and he killed Leary to cover them up. Don’t worry, he’s going down too.” She grins wickedly and cracks her knuckles.

Eve sputters. “Who _are_ you people, though? Private mercenaries?”

“Kinda,” says Hardison cheerfully.

Parker shrugs. “We help people. People the balance of power doesn’t favour. When a company like Mnemosyne is crushing people who can’t fight back… we provide leverage.”

Eve holds up a hand to stop Parker. “I’m sorry,” she says, “this is a lot. You’re telling me Dillon killed Leary, not…”

“Not whoever you’re looking for,” says Eliot. “Leary was working late and walked in on Dillon talking about an illegal sale of data, so Dillon killed him and made it look like a burglary.”

“Okay,” Eve says, rubbing her eyes. “And you’re just… telling us this? Because?”

Parker shrugs again. “You’re chasing bad guys. We didn’t want you to waste your time.”

“And hey,” Hardison says with a hopeful grin, “can’t hurt to be friendly to good old MI6, right?”

Eve can’t help but return his smile. All three of these people are dangerously charismatic, she thinks, and dangerously competent. Dillon is fucked.

* * *

A week later, a notification pops up on Eve’s computer screen: `New email from Oksana Astankova.`

It has to be either grisly murder photos or adorable cat pictures, Eve assumes; those are the only kinds of emails Villanelle ever sends. This time, though, it’s a link to a video on an American news website. Eve clicks it, not sure what to expect. The chyron at the bottom of the video says PORTLAND, OR.

_The headquarters of Mnemosyne Industries were raided today by a joint FBI–Interpol task force. In addition to numerous charges levied against the company itself related to privacy rights and data retention, acting CEO Henry S. Dillon has been charged with the murder of his predecessor, Andrew Leary._

By the time the video has finished, Villanelle has come over to Eve’s desk, face inscrutable.

“Some coincidence, huh?” says Villanelle.

“Karma’s a bitch,” Eve says with a smile.


End file.
